News overview

Seven years since the Ali Enterprises factory fire of 2012, in which over 250 workers were killed, textile and garment factories in Pakistan remain as unsafe as they were then, warns a report launched today.

A building safety initiative launching in India today, aimed at improving safety for workers in the country’s garment industry, is set on a path to ignore workers’ voices and replicate mistakes from the past. Although the “Life and Building Safety Initiative” professes to learn from the programme that made factories safe in Bangladesh after the Rana Plaza building collapse, it ignores its most vital elements.

Clean Clothes Campaign Turkey investigated the Turkish denim industry's use of Potassium Permanganate. Research revealed that workers use it in spray form to create the faded look in denim. The workers reported suffering skin and respiratory problems.

As witness signatories to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, we are concerned about the potential negative impact on worker safety, both short-term and long-term, of the recently concluded Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Accord and the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) and the diverging interpretations that have emerged over the last few weeks.

Our latest report reveals that no major clothing brand is able to show that workers making their clothing in Asia, Africa, Central America or Eastern Europe are paid enough to escape the poverty trap. That means that apparel brands and retailers are violating internationally recognized human right norms, and their own Codes of Conduct.

On 19 May 2019, the Appellate Division of the Bangladesh Supreme Court accepted a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) reached earlier this month between the Bangladesh Accord Steering Committee and the Bangladesh employers’ association in the ready-made-garment sector, BGMEA.

An independent mechanism allowing garment workers to directly raise safety issues is making factories safer and empowering workers to advocate for their own safety, according to a report published today by the International Labor Rights Forum.

On the sixth anniversary of the Rana Plaza building collapse, labour rights groups are calling on the government of Bangladesh to cease attempts to expel the Accord on Fire and Building Safety from Bangladesh and to urgently increase safety efforts for the buildings currently under the government’s oversight, which include tens of thousands of factories across all industries.

The government of Bangladesh is using proceedings before the Supreme Court of Bangladesh to prevent the Accord on Fire and Building Safety, the safety programme established in the aftermath ofthe Rana Plaza collapse, from operating, thereby putting workers’ safety at risk.

A coalition of ActionAid, Amnesty International, Anti-Slavery International, Clean Clothes Campaign, the European Coalition for Corporate Justice and FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights) hope this will lead the European Commission to follow suit and take immediate steps to develop an action plan.

Workers from workwear manufacturing company ATG Ceylon Pvt Ltd. in Sri Lanka have been subject to a range of human rights abuses breaching both Sri Lankan and international labour laws and conventions.

In response to requests from trade unions, and other independent labour rights and human rights organizations, on February 27 the Fair Labor Association (FLA) voted to require its company affiliates to publicly disclose their supplier lists.